FAO launches International Year of the Woman Farmer 2026 to accelerate gender equality and women’s empowerment in agrifood systems

Rome – The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) yesterday launched The International Year of the Woman Farmer 2026, a global campaign aimed at recognizing women’s  indispensable yet often overlooked contributions to global agrifood systems and to galvanize efforts to close persistent gender gaps.

Designated by the UN General Assembly in 2024, the International Year aims to spotlight the realities faced by women farmers and drive policy reforms and investment to advance gender equality, empower women, and build more resilient agrifood systems. FAO, together with the other Rome-based UN agencies – the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) - will coordinate activities throughout 2026.

Women make up a significant share of the world’s agricultural workforce and are indispensable across agrifood value chains — from production and processing to distribution and trade — playing a central role in household food security and nutrition. In 2021 agrifood systems employed 40 percent of working women globally - nearly equal to men. 

Despite this, women’s contributions remain undervalued and their working conditions are often more precarious: irregular, informal, part-time, low-paid, labour-intensive, and highly vulnerable. They continue to face systemic barriers, including limited access to land, finance, technologies, education, extension services, and participation in decision-making at all levels.

The Year was officially launched at a ceremony held on the sidelines of the 179th Session of the FAO Council. Opening remarks were delivered by FAO Chief Economist Maximo Torero, who warned that progress on women’s empowerment in agrifood systems has stalled over the past decade.

“The cost of inaction is enormous. We know from recent estimates that closing the gaps between men and women in agriculture could raise global GDP by one trillion dollars and reduce food insecurity for 45 million people,” he said. 

He stressed that the observance goes far beyond celebration, calling for “bringing policy attention to the multidimensional challenges they (women farmers) face, and promoting legal reforms and policy and programmatic action that allow women to have equal land rights, equal access to finance, to technology, to extension services, to markets, and to decision-making.”

The event was co-organized by Jordan and Ireland, represented respectively by FAO Regional Goodwill Ambassador for the Near East and North Africa Princess Basma bint Ali and Maria Dunne, Assistant Secretary-General at Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

In her closing remarks, FAO Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol emphasized that the needs of women farmers must remain a priority well beyond 2026.

“Throughout 2026, the International Year will move from today’s sharing of personal stories and discussions to practical work — national policies, community partnerships, research, investment, and dialogue between farmers, cooperatives, governments, finance institutions, youth networks, and universities. The goal is simple: turn commitment into practice, and practice into measurable impact,” she said.

Who Is a Woman Farmer?

Women farmers work in diverse roles across agrifood systems and come from all backgrounds: young and older women, Indigenous women, women in local communities, women with disabilities, and refugee and displaced women. They are smallholder producers, peasants, agricultural laborers, fishers and fish workers, beekeepers, pastoralists, processors, traders, women in agricultural sciences, rural entrepreneurs, traditional knowledge holders, and more—whether in formal or informal work, with or without land ownership.

Recent FAO reports - The Status of Women in Agrifood Systems and The Unjust Climate – underscore the scale of gender inequality and the disproportionate climate risks faced by women. Together, the reports highlight the structural barriers limiting women’s productivity, income, access to resources, and resilience.

Key findings include:

• Women farmers typically work on smaller plots of land than men. Even when they manage farms of the same size, the gender gap in land productivity is 24 percent.
• Each day of extreme high temperatures reduces the total value of crops produced by women farmers by three percent relative to men.
• A 1° C increase in long-term average temperatures is associated with a 34 percent reduction in the total incomes of female-headed households, relative to those of male-headed households.
• Women engaged in wage employment in agrifood systems earn 78 cents for every dollar that men earn.
• The unpaid care work performed by women and girls contributes at least $ 10.8 trillion to the global economy annually.
• Reducing gender disparities in employment, education, and income could eliminate 52 percent of the food insecurity gap which is consistently higher among women.
• Empowering rural women through targeted development interventions could raise incomes for 58 million more people and boost resilience for 235 million.